Latest news with #Bhattacharya
New Indian Express
a day ago
- Politics
- New Indian Express
West Bengal BJP President Samik Bhattacharya: Man with no follower in BJP, yet trusted to unite a fractured party
KOLKATA: Without a pause, he can recite the poetry of Rabindranath Tagore, Jibanananda Das and Shakti Chattopadhyay one after another. Closely associated with the RSS for more than five decades, Samik Bhattacharya, known for his calm demeanour and poetic sensibilities, is now at the helm of West Bengal BJP as its new state president. The saffron party has handed him the baton to lead the organisation into the crucial Assembly elections that are just 9-10 months away. Originally from Panchanantala in Howrah, Bhattacharya first came into contact with the RSS there. During his student days at Cotton College in Guwahati, he briefly worked with the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP). A good speaker in Bengali, English and Hindi, the 61-year-old Bhattacharya has consistently maintained his stance with dignity and without a trace of malice toward his opponents. He has endured several political ups and downs. At one point, he had to face internal strife within the Youth Morcha. Yet he remained unwavering in his mission. When confronted with uncomfortable questions about his past in the party, Bhattacharya often responds by quoting his favourite Bengali poet, Premendra Mitra. His loyalty to the BJP is resolute. He reportedly remains indifferent to internal gossip or dissent. Bhattacharya was first elected to the West Bengal Legislative Assembly in a by-election from the Basirhat South constituency a decade ago. Though his tenure as an MLA was brief, he earned praise for his eloquent speeches in the Assembly. However, back then, he was not particularly known as a strong organiser.
Politico
3 days ago
- Health
- Politico
Former NIH head: We need Boston and the Bay
INFLUENCERS Times have changed since Dr. Elias Zerhouni ran the National Institutes of Health under President George W. Bush. Back then, the Republican president was keen to double the agency's budget, not cut it by 40 percent, as President Donald Trump's fiscal 2026 budget proposal calls for. 'I've been in this business for 50 years and I know a thing or two about what our fundamental drivers of success are,' said Zerhouni, who after leaving NIH served as president of global research and development at the pharmaceutical company Sanofi. 'It's not a subsidy that we're giving. It's an investment we're making. In some ways, they are really pennywise and pound-foolish,' he added. Zerhouni recalls when Republicans would never have considered such drastic steps, which he spells out in his new memoir: 'Disease Knows No Politics.' In an interview with Erin, Zerhouni talked about what drives successful research and explained why current NIH Director Jay Bhattacharya's suggestion to redistribute research dollars away from coastal powerhouse institutions is misguided. This interview has been edited for length and clarity. What do you think about Bhattacharya's push to redistribute research money to the heartland? Send the money to Pocatello, Idaho, and hope for the best. He's ignoring the mechanics of why we get these superconcentrations in Boston or in the Bay Area for technology. The notion that you pick and choose and force-feed your research enterprises is naive. You cannot do science without having access to MIT, access to Harvard, access to Boston University, access to Mass General Hospital. In Boston, you have 250,000 scientists and engineers. You need a concentration in disciplines to do science today. But couldn't government funding help build more of them? The way you do good biomedical research today is by breaking the barriers between biological science and physical sciences and computational sciences. You don't find that everywhere. That combination of talent only exists in a few places. Bhattacharya seems to say that the maldistribution of dollars is what he thinks is the disease. It's not. It's a fundamental characteristic of powerful research environments where you have multidisciplinary interactions that are constantly interacting. Places like San Francisco and Seattle and the Bay have benefited from decades of investment by universities, philanthropies, government. You can't reproduce that by just taking the money from them and sending it somewhere else and thinking you're going to get the same results. What do you make of how the NIH is functioning under Trump? I've never seen so many political appointees coordinating above the head of agencies. That is unusual. In my time, there were only two political appointees, the National Cancer Institute director and myself. It's good if you're attacking unmet needs that are really well-defined. This issue of nutritional sciences for the American people is a big one. That's a good thing if there is political will to face special interests that will come out against it, especially the agricultural lobbies that benefit from subsidies and the companies that do not want any more regulation. Same for chronic diseases. It's a problem no one has been able to address. But I don't think you're going to address that by just changing the color chemistry in Fruit Loops. WELCOME TO FUTURE PULSE This is where we explore the ideas and innovators shaping health care. Pharmaceutical companies are charting out their artificial intelligence priorities for the next two years, according to a new report from Define Ventures. It says that most drug industry execs want to use AI to find efficiencies, reduce the cost of drug discovery and boost revenues — and they're looking for the right tech partners to help them. Share any thoughts, news, tips and feedback with Carmen Paun at cpaun@ Ruth Reader at rreader@ or Erin Schumaker at eschumaker@ Want to share a tip securely? Message us on Signal: CarmenP.82, RuthReader.02 or ErinSchumaker.01. BUSINESS PLAN As state and federal lawmakers consider online safeguards for kids, more companies are using technology to determine their customers' ages and, if needed, block them from using riskier features. Roblox, a wildly popular gaming site, announced this week that it would start estimating users' ages before allowing teens to communicate with certain users without chat filters. The changes represent a significant step above the industry standard and a broadening of its safety work, reports POLITICO's California tech team. 'This makes Roblox the only major platform that will require age verification like facial age estimation in order to use private voice or unfiltered chat,' Ryan Ebanks, a principal product manager at Roblox, said on a call with press. 'We hope others will join us.' How it works: Roblox users 13 and older will be able to message and voice chat more freely with people they approve as 'trusted.' If users take a video selfie Roblox will analyze it against a dataset to estimate their age range. Backup options like ID verification, parental consent and participation in a Zoom call are also available. Teens can add other users, including adults, to the 'trusted' category by importing contacts or scanning their accounts' QR codes. Users identified as under 13 by the estimation technology will have their age corrected and lose access to the feature. Ebanks said all conversations on Roblox, including those that use the feature, will 'remain proactively monitored for critical harms.' Sharing images and videos over chat is also prohibited, regardless of age, and parents can choose to receive a list of who their kids add as virtual friends. Why it matters: Federal legislators are considering a bevy of options to require social media and gaming platforms to protect kids. Specifically, lawmakers are concerned with the impact of bullying, online drug sales and how certain features of social media might harm kids' mental and physical health. Last year, the Senate overwhelmingly passed a bill that would have required social media companies to design their platforms with consideration for kids' safety, but it never reached the floor for a vote in the House. Now, lawmakers are considering a variety of new bills. One idea gaining popularity is to require app stores to verify their users' ages and obtain parental consent for those under 18. Roblox's chief safety officer, Matt Kaufman, said the company is 'constantly taking input' from policymakers, but the updates aren't a response to any specific proposals.
India Today
3 days ago
- Health
- India Today
How Kolkata researchers are turning potato, fungi into protein sources for Indians
India may be one of the world's largest producers of legumes and other protein-rich crops, the country is still alarmingly to a recent survey by the Indian Market Research Bureau, a staggering 73% of Indians do not consume enough protein, and only about 10% meet the daily dietary problem is more than just nutritional, it's deeply economic, cultural, and But a team of scientists in Kolkata might be onto something the Food Technology and Science Institute (FTSI) under TCG CREST, researchers are quietly developing plant-based proteins from potatoes and fungi that could radically transform how India meets its nutritional protein absorption scores rivalling, and even exceeding, those of meat and imported soy isolates, their work is poised to reduce India's dependence on expensive protein imports like pea and soy, most of which currently come from INDIA NEEDS NEW PROTEIN SOLUTIONSIndia's protein crisis is a paradox. While the country grows a wide range of protein-rich crops, bioavailability or how well our bodies can absorb these proteins remains a huge Parthasarathi Bhattacharya, head of FTSI, explains it plainly: 'We're protein deficient mainly for three reasons: we don't consume enough protein-rich foods, plant-based proteins are harder for the body to absorb, and animal protein remains expensive for many.'This gap is especially critical for vegetarians, who make up more than 50% of the population, and for the remaining population, many of whom cannot afford animal-based protein sources within our staple vegetarian foods like dals and pulses, bioavailability is low.'The pulses that generally we consider as the protein source, India is importing a major chunk. But the challenge with majority of the pulses is that we are not able to absorb 100% of the protein that are present in pulses,' Dr. Bhattacharya tells NEW ERA OF PROTEIN: POTATOES AND MYCOPROTEINSAt FTSI's state-of-the-art research facility, the team is rethinking how we approach protein. Their biggest breakthrough? Using two unconventional sources: potatoes and fungi.'We use fungi because it's very easy to grow in a controlled environment. We are trying to bring in some of the high protein mushroom, not for extraction purposes, but readymade in the form of tofu or in the form of paneer kind of shape.'These high-protein fungal foods will not be harvested in traditional fields but created via solid-state fermentation in bioreactors—offering cleaner, scalable, and more controlled production potatoes, a commonly available and underutilised crop, are proving to be a protein is one of the second largest vegetable crop in the country. There's a high potential that we can convert this potato into a milk format,' says Dr. Bhattacharya. 'The protein that are present in potato is extremely good protein. Its conversion ratio is as good as meat.'FTSI is already experimenting with potato-based milk and ice creams that are not only high in protein but also appeal to modern consumers looking for indulgence without POSTBIOTICS, AND SMART NUTRITIONOne of the biggest hurdles with plant proteins is absorption. FTSI's solution goes beyond working on ways to make proteins more bioavailable through probiotic and postbiotic enhancements, essentially engineering food that works with your gut. Postbiotics are the beneficial compounds produced when probiotics (the "good" bacteria in your gut) digest and break down food or ferment fibres in your intestine.'We make those protein bioavailable using some different probiotic bacteria. We also use postbiotic, we use some of these dietary fibres that help these probiotic bacteria to attach into the gut,' explains Dr. team is also applying artificial intelligence (AI) to study how gut microbes produce helpful molecules under different conditions.'We are also initiating our work on the application of AI and machine learning (ML) in postbiotic molecule identification and development.'advertisementThis intersection of biotechnology, food science, and AI is where the institute believes the next generation of nutrition will A HOME-GROWN PROTEIN INDUSTRYThe economic implications of this research are profound. Currently, India imports nearly 70% of the protein isolates used in supplements and functional foods, mainly from China, Australia, and Canada. This not only drives up prices but leaves the domestic market dependent and vulnerable.'There are not too many large scale protein manufacturers. It comes mostly from China, so this is an opportunity for an industry to enter into large-scale protein manufacturing other than whey protein,' Dr. Bhattacharya team is already developing products like vegan protein bars, no-sugar shakes, fibre-enriched gummies, and even protein-rich kulfis that combine indulgence with nutrition.'Even if there are some indulgent foods like ice cream, we want to remove that fear that it's not good for our health. So it's more that the theme is you take more of this ice cream, and you become healthier.'A VISION FOR FUTUREThe team isn't just developing lab experiments, it's creating a pipeline for commercially viable, nutritious foods made in India, for by the TCG Group, Dr. Bhattacharya and his team are working to turn these innovations into consumer products, making GMP prototypes that could change the game for India's protein Indian diets already rich in fibre, the addition of high-performance, bioavailable proteins could create balanced, functional foods suited to Indian palates and a country grappling with nutrition inequality, rising lifestyle diseases, and a population that's both price- and health-conscious, the answer might just be sitting in our potato baskets and mushroom trays, transformed not by tradition, but by science.- Ends
Indian Express
4 days ago
- Politics
- Indian Express
Telangana High Court quashes 2016 SC/ST Act case against CM Revanth Reddy
The Telangana High Court Thursday quashed a First Information Report (FIR) registered against Chief Minister A Revanth Reddy in 2016, then an MLA of the TDP, under the Scheduled Caste and Scheduled Tribe (Prevention of Atrocities) Act and the Indian Penal Code (IPC). The case stems from a complaint filed against him at Gachibowli police station by N Peddi Raju, Director, Razole Constituency S C Mutually Aided Cooperative Housing Society Limited. In the complaint, Raju alleged that at Revanth's behest, his brother, A Kondal Reddy, and others illegally trespassed onto the land in Gopanapally belonging to the society. He claimed they demolished a room of the society with an earthmover to occupy the land, and also abused the de facto complainant using casteist slurs. The case is currently in the trial stage before the Special Sessions Judge for Trial of Cases under the SCs/STs POA Act, 1989, and the VII Additional District Sessions Judge, Ranga Reddy district. In 2020, Revanth Reddy approached the Telangana High Court to seek the quashing of the case. The bench of Justice Moushumi Bhattacharya on Thursday allowed Reddy's plea. The court found that Reddy was not present at the place at the time as claimed in the complaint, and viewed that the case against him is not maintainable. Before the pronouncement of order, the counsel for the de facto complainant informed the bench that a transfer application had been filed with the Supreme Court. This application sought to have the case heard by a different bench of the High Court, alleging that the complainant hadn't been allowed to present their arguments fully. However, after delivering the order, Justice Bhattacharya pointed out several discrepancies. Justice Bhattacharya noted that the transfer application was brought up only at the very end of the hearing, after the matter had already been reserved for orders. Additionally, the bench observed that the application lacked a filing date, raising questions about its timeliness. The court directly addressed the complainant's contention of not being heard. Justice Bhattacharya stated that the 'case was listed before me on multiple occasions.' She further highlighted that the 'de facto [complainant] has submitted elaborate arguments, and submitted judgements in furtherance of his arguments as well; and the judgements find place in the order,' directly refuting the claim of being denied an opportunity to present their case.
Time of India
4 days ago
- Business
- Time of India
Modi in Durgapur today, will launch projects worth Rs 5k cr
1 2 Kolkata/Durgapur: Prime Minister Narendra Modi will address a rally in Durgapur on Friday, from where he will inaugurate projects worth Rs 5,000 crore in Bankura, Purulia and Durgapur. The largest of these will be the Rs 1,950 crore piped natural gas (PNG) project in Bankura and Purulia to provide PNG in households, commercial establishments and industries. Modi will launch pollution control systems at the Durgapur Steel and Raghunathpur thermal power stations of Damodar Valley Corporation, worth over Rs 1,457 crore. You Can Also Check: Kolkata AQI | Weather in Kolkata | Bank Holidays in Kolkata | Public Holidays in Kolkata The PM will launch the Rs 1,190 crore worth Durgapur to Kolkata section (132 km) of the Durgapur-Haldia natural gas pipeline as part of the Pradhan Mantri Urja Ganga project. The Durgapur-Kolkata section will run through East Burdwan, Hooghly and Nadia districts. Rs 390 crore-worth railway projects will also be announced. Modi is scheduled to arrive at the Nehru Stadium at 3pm. He will address the rally at 3.40pm and leave from Durgapur at 5pm. On Thursday evening, Modi posted on X: "Looking forward to being among the people of West Bengal tomorrow, 18th July. At a programme in Durgapur, will lay the foundation stones for various works and also inaugurate projects worth over Rs 5000 crore. by Taboola by Taboola Sponsored Links Sponsored Links Promoted Links Promoted Links You May Like Gentle Japanese hair growth method for men and women's scalp Hair's Rich Learn More Undo The projects cover sectors like oil and gas, power, railways, roads." "West Bengal is suffering due to TMC misrule. People are seeing the BJP with hope and are convinced that only the BJP can deliver on development," he added. A day ahead of his visit, Bengal BJP netas were seen reaching out to households in Durgapur with invitation cards for the rally. BJP state chief Samik Bhattacharya invited residents of Palashdiha village near Durgapur. "The flight of capital from Bengal started due to the lack of foresight of CPM and damaging decisions of Trinamool. Industrialists have the perception that Bengal is no more an investment-friendly state," Bhattacharya said. "Investors are looking forward to the results of 2026 polls. BJP will ensure Bengal becomes an industry-friendly state after a year of Trinamool's ouster," he added. Talking about the condition of migrant workers from Bengal, Bhattacharya said joblessness has pushed Bengal workers to work as masons or peons in other states. "The state does not earn anything from industries. Sales from liquor and lottery are revenue drivers in Bengal now. Govt has raked up the issue of Bengali migrant workers to shift focus from that," he said. "We have a declared policy of driving out illegal immigrants in the country. Bharat is no Dharamshala and we will not allow any illegal immigrant in the country," Bhattacharya added.
